I have two questions: 1. Oops--this is so embarrassing I brine my cheese in a crockpot in my cheese fridge. I couldn't see into it very clearly and forgot I had a cheese in there! So, it was in there for a few days (yes, my whole record-keeping system broke down! But I have already ordered the edible ink pens...) Anyway, when I took off the top, it smelled fermented--or not quite fermented like beer is fermented, but more like when I do saurkraut with whey. Fizzy--it smelled fizzy. And there were some coagulated ? places in the brine, where there was a sort of solid cloud that I could lift out?

Since nothing smelled bad, I put the cheese up to dry, but thought I would ask about that, despite the fact that possibly no one knows about this since maybe nobody has ever by mistake left a cheese in the brine for way too long. (I did get rid of that brine, tho.)(Gee, maybe I should have drunk it?)

2. Y'all may recall that since I use an old fridge for my cheese that I had trouble with the cheeses dehydrating. I experimented with different things (like boiling the cheeses), and the thing that seems to work, at least if the cheese is only a little far gone, is re-soaking it in whey. Does anyone have any idea about this, again considering that probably no one has ever dehydrated their cheese like this?

It's not just about cheeses drying out. They need proper temperature and humidity in order to age properly. Otherwise the bacteria and enzymes do not have the right conditions to do their job well. Poor affinage can lead to bitterness, off flavors, and many other defects. You should focus on proper technique so your cheeses don't need rescuing.

I have to confirm what Sailor just said. Might work for the short term but not a good idea. Grate it and make soup, salad or pizza. Grated cheeses of all kinds can add lots of new flavors to your dishes. Once grated even a dry cheese will melt into a liquid.

There's a challenge in rehydrating cheese. The challenge is that as the surface becomes water logged, two things happen:1) It inhibits water permeation inside the body, so you'd get a thin layer of more moist cheese, followed by dry stuff2) Unless well balanced for ph and calcium, whey will damage the outer cheese surface.

The best way to add water again is to shred the cheese and make it into processed cheese. Anything else will leave you with gradients. If there's no way to control aging better (waxing, vacuum sealing, etc), then I would eat them a tad younger.

But generally, no, there's no good way to remedy temperature or humidity abused cheese... it will lose fat and/or water, and no way to get it back.

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Taking an extended leave (until 2015) from the forums to build out my farm and dairy. Please e-mail or PM if you need anything.

We have mostly used the "rehydrated" cheeses for grating--they were really difficult to grate when they were hard! Altho I have to admit--I now have enough cheese that I don't need to worry about the dehydrated ones... and with my new hygrometer, hopefully there won't be any more